As some of you may already know I will be attending Tekko as a panelist again this year. I’ve got 5 panels…well 4 panels and a live show in one of the panel rooms. I welcome you all to attend and here’s the run-down of what I’m bringing to the convention this year:

-Friday, April 7th-

Noon Tekko Gakkou Room – Japanese Heraldry: The History of the Mon. We’ll discuss what Kamon are, how they were utilized, how they are still utilized, where you’ve seen them, and compare them to similar Western Ideas.

2:00pm 18+ Panel Room – How To Write MORE Dirty Stuff. All you adult-y type folks interested in writing, or simply laughing at me comment on sexy gifs, can join me in the 18+ Panel Room for a lesson on Writing Dirty. We’ll address purple language again briefly before touching on setting up a scene, fore and after play.

11:00pm Panel Room 1 – Samurai Gaiden Presents: Live Rakugo! My first ever live Rakugo performance (totally *not* nervous, BTW… 0_0 ). I’ll be giving some information about Rakugo, what it is, and how it works in between my three chosen stories: Xiahou Dun’s Eye, Botan Doro ‘Peony Lantern’, and the Gyurokushujo Monogatari ‘Tale of Orihime and Hikoboshi’.

-Saturday, April 8th-

1:30pm Workshop Room – The Art of Renga – Linked Verse Samurai Poetry Workshop. Come join us and make poetry with us! We’ll give a brief overview of Waka poetry, particularly the Tanka and Renga styles and then we’ll help you to produce Renga poetry together with us! Don’t have a pen or paper? Don’t be silly; free pens and notepads will be provided for the workshop at no cost to you.

4:00 pm Tekko Gakkou Room – Waka – The Classical Japanese Poetry of the Samurai. Did you know that poetry was one of the samurai warrior’s favorite pastimes? Come learn about the poetry of Japan including Tanka, Renga, Bussokusekika, and we’ll even touch on the redheaded step child of Waka: The Haiku.

If you aren’t already going to Tekko this year, maybe considering taking a trip this weekend and visiting with us in between panels. Also a surprising request was made of me this year: I *will* autograph copies of my book if you have one and approach me with it (between panels, of course).

For those of you who have had an interest in my book Escort, but thought it was a little pricey…know that the Kindle edition has been price reduced to $2.99.

In celebration of that, and the fact that we’re trying to build our subscriber base on Samurai Gaiden, I’ve decided to open a sweepstakes. All you have to do to enter is follow the link below and watch our video on Valentine’s Day in Japan.

I feel I couldn’t really remain silent on the subject of His Excellency King Drumpf’s recent executive order barring Muslims from entering the country, including U.S. Citizens originally born in predominantly Muslim countries, I saw this tweet:

It got me thinking about a man I knew once upon a while ago, Victor (real name Dharkur). He was Iraqi by birth, but when we invaded Iraq he defected to the U.S. And joined the U.S. Army as a translator and interpreter. He had taken a furlough of sorts into the Reserves to pursue his Engineering degree and he had gotten a job at the place I was working at the time.

He and I had several interesting conversations about Islam and it is thanks, in part, to him that when I wrote The Sultana’s Journey as part of my book Escort that I knew enough to make sense of how going on Hajj worked.

I never once felt unsafe with this man around, and considering we were in a law-enforcement type of setting I felt buoyed with him acting as my backup. As the senior officer I knew I could send him to do a task and he would accomplish it and that if I needed aid with something, Victor would be there for me.

We only worked for a few weeks together before a more permanent position became available for him at another location.

He had once lived in the south where he was engaged to a nice young white girl. Her family was Southern Baptist and at a gathering her father, uncles, and two brothers cordoned him off to the side and told him he had five minutes to leave or they were going to shoot him. His fiancée said, “No, they’re serious. I love you…so you should leave.”

As he was driving away he looked back to see the uncles coming out of the house carrying shotguns. That was how America thanked him for aiding us in battle. Keep in mind that neither of the five men about to shoot him had seen a day in the military and this was a career soldier they were about to murder. True patriotism there, I must say.

Now to be fair I only know a few dozen Muslims, but I’ve yet to meet one that made me feel unsafe. I, however, am intimately acquainted (and often times related) to violent Christians. People who regularly say things like, “We should just nuke the whole Middle East.”

Yes, because nothing proves you’re more peaceful than something like talking about murdering millions of innocent people because they pray the same god as you, but call him by a different name.

I feel much safer in a group with the Muslim acquaintances I have than the Christians I know. So if we really want to ban a hateful religion, Islam isn’t the one I’m afraid of.

I don’t think I could ever actually work in customer service. Maybe if I could zap stupid people through the phone…

My first car was an awesome ’92 Toyota Camry. It was a really nice shade of purple that I had never seen on a car. It was so nice and ran so well, I miss it so much! I was at work one day and a coworker saw my car and called it “The Purple People Eater” and I thought it was funny and it just stuck.

Rich and I actually prefer to go to the park or just go for a walk rather than going to the movies or parties or stuff like that. So that’s really most days for us.

Only Rich could take something so innocent as reading to the children and turn it pervy. Although, I would hope that Rich wouldn’t try this, but he can be quite shameless…

Hi there everyone. I’m glad you came, I wanted to talk about something very important with you. Have a seat by the fireplace and let me bring you the knowledge of a generation. What’s that? Why yes, I haven been listening to Ninja Sex Party almost non-stop for the past three hours. Why do you ask?

I sound like who, now?

So, what’s this super important thing I need to tell you? Well that’s simple. Have you heard the news? What news? Oh don’t be silly, I know you’ve heard it, already. I know it for a fact, that you’ve-

Just tell me the news!

Okay, okay…

Did you hear that I wrote a book? It’s called Escort. And it’s currently available.

Oh, you’re dead, bitch!

Wait, wait…that’s not all! Did you have any interest in a bit of a free taste of the book? Because we have a trailer now. It’s specifically for the first of the three stories in Escort, The Shrine Maiden’s Secret. Remember when I talked about the art work I was having that artist, Kiersten Nichols do for me? Well that’s what the art was for — the trailer!

Here’s the voice credits for the trailer in case anyone else was interested in hiring the wonderful folks I hired. The young lady who performed Matsuuri’s lines preferred not to be credited in the work, so I shall honor her wishes. The narrator, though, was a talented Brit named Sara Dunham. Yachiro was played by the new actor handling Gene’s lines in the re-release of Monster, Cary Reese.

All right folks, unfortunately Tekkoshocon 2015 is over. But fortunately it was pretty good this year. We did two panels this year (How To Avoid Bad Writing and History of Sengoku Japan) and, to be honest, I was worried about the turnout since we were on Friday and the largest number of attendees comes in on Saturday.

But both rooms were super-packed!

Okay, so…maybe it wasn’t that packed. But still, the rooms were way more full than I was expecting. Thanks, again for showing up. I should have my full review and my merchandise review (i.e. a list of the stuff we bought) in a few days. I’ve got some time off this week, so I should be able to get them done in a timely fashion (for once).

As always, thanks for coming folks. And not just to my panels, but thanks everyone for showing up to the con as a whole. It was a fantastic year. It seems like each year Tekko has fewer and fewer hiccups, this year was no exception. Well, except for the surprise fire drill, but that’s another story. I should also have some video up on the Youtube channel before too super long.